A while ago I blogged about a new playlist I put together of songs that
both these great vocalists recorded. While the arrangements mood and
intonation often differed I found it fascinating to listen to and
reflective of my knowledge that they both were on record stating that
each influenced the other. And now along comes this terrific piece in
the NYT that documents their interaction and communication more than I
ever knew or imagined. As an old fan of Billie and a new fan of
Frankie, whose recordings I have been recently exploring (not many
vocalists left I have yet to explore) nothing I have read recently has
excited warmed and stimulated me as much as this piece. Below is my
real time commenting, the link to the article and the full essay as
published in the New York Times.
A favorite tidbit is she called him "Frankie". 'I told him certain notes at the end he could bend.
... Bending those notes — that’s all I helped Frankie with.’’ Those
notes that Holiday told him to bend — they bent toward the boudoir."
‘It is Billie Holiday ... who was, and still remains, the greatest
single musical influence on me,’’ he said in 1958." I love this reference to "cunning" as follows: "Her approach to rhythm was cunning. She
meandered around the beat, slyly elongating and truncating syllables,
gliding down for a landing in surprising places. Sinatra was captivated
by the third song she ever recorded,
‘‘I Wished on the Moon,’’ a stock-standard Tin Pan Alley ballad that
Holiday, with deft tugs at the melody, transforms into something deeper:
a celebration of ecstatic new romance tinged with the melancholy
awareness that love fades." The following had me channeling Lauren Hill -
"that thing, that thing that ... " "As for Sinatra, even as a tyro — a
babyfaced 25-year-old fronting Tommy Dorsey’s band in a bow tie too big
for his string-bean frame — the throb in his song was unmistakable." Oh
yeah " that throb that throb that ..." Perchance does it reveal my 'youth" to
inquire what the f is a tyro? 2 Brilliant observations: "Of course, the message of Holiday and
Sinatra wasn’t just sex. It was pain. To put the matter in genre terms:
Both Holiday and Sinatra were torch singers. In Sinatra’s case, this was
a novelty. Torch singing had traditionally been women’s work, but his
records made the case that a bruiser in a fedora could love as hard,
could hurt as bad, as any dame." and Sinatra
is often celebrated as the swaggering Rat-Packer, Holiday as a tragic
balladeer. Yet it’s Holiday’s music that percolates with greater joie de
vivre, and Sinatra’s that scrapes darker depths. Here's
what I was trying to say in my earlier piece, only more observant
articulate nuanced and savvy: "One of my favorite parlor
games is to listen to the singers’ versions of the same songs: to hear
the hay that they both made of ‘‘All of Me’’ or ‘‘Day In, Day Out,’’ to
observe their different angles of attack on ‘‘Night and Day’’ —
Holiday’s playful and insouciant, Sinatra’s grand, booming, brooding.
Then there are those moments when the two giants directly address one
other. Sinatra was the acolyte, but the flow of influence reversed on
Holiday’s lavishly orchestrated ‘‘Lady in Satin’’ (1958), an homage to
Sinatra’s Capitol Records concept albums. Holiday made the connection
explicit by opening the LP with a tremulous version of ‘‘I’m a Fool to
Want You,’’ Sinatra’s signature torch song, co-written by the man
himself. A few years later, Sinatra answered back on a recording of the
standard ‘‘Yesterdays,’’ a Holiday staple. At the 1:11 mark of that
song, Sinatra sings the word ‘‘then,’’ unleashing a dramatically low and
rumbling descending vocal line. Keen-eared listeners picked it up right
away: This was Ol’ Blue Eyes doing his Billie Holiday impression. A
century after their births, Holiday and Sinatra are still talking to
each other. What a privilege it is to listen in."
Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday: They Did It Their Way
More than just contemporaries, Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday were mutual admirers who pushed each other musically.Credit
From left: Donaldson Collection/Getty Images; Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
In
life, the two may have been miles apart in circumstance and success.
But as each other’s great influences, they’ll be forever one.
BILLIE
HOLIDAY, née Eleanora Fagan, was born in Philadelphia, 100 years ago
this past April 7. Eight months later, on Dec. 12, 1915, Francis Albert
Sinatra arrived, about 95 miles up the coast in Hoboken, N.J. The birth
of these two great — arguably, greatest — popular singers, in the same
year, a century ago, might be deemed a cosmic fluke, an accident of
history. You could also call it history in action. They were born into a
still-primitive pop music universe, but changes were afoot. By the time
they turned pro, as teenagers in the 1930s, American music had been
reshaped by modernity: by the blues and jazz and suave Broadway pop, by
electrical recording and microphones and radio. This new brand of music
and set of technological tools were ideally suited to Holiday and
Sinatra’s talents — an artistry based on uncommon musical and emotional
intelligence and expressed through miraculously shrewd and subtle vocal
phrasing. Had Eleanora and Francis been born in another year, had they
come of age in a different musical world, they might never have become
Lady Day and the Voice.
They
were linked by more than just the coincidence of their birth year. We
associate Holiday and Sinatra with other muses and collaborators — she
with the saxophonist Lester Young, he with the arranger Nelson Riddle —
but throughout their careers, the singers exerted a powerful pull on one
another. Their paths crossed early. Sinatra first saw Holiday perform
sometime in the late ’30s; he became an instant devotee. In 1944,
Holiday told columnist Earl Wilson that she’d offered Sinatra advice on
his singing. ‘‘I told him certain notes at the end he could bend. ...
Bending those notes — that’s all I helped Frankie with.’’ Sinatra made
no secret of his debt to Holiday: ‘‘It is Billie Holiday ... who was,
and still remains, the greatest single musical influence on me,’’ he
said in 1958. In ‘‘Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra,’’ from 2003,
George Jacobs, the singer’s former valet, writes that Sinatra visited
Holiday in her New York City hospital room in July 1959, shortly before
her death from drug and alcohol-related liver and heart disease. When
Holiday died, Sinatra holed up in his penthouse for two days, weeping,
drinking and playing her records.
The
Holiday-Sinatra bond, in other words, was a classic relationship of
guru and disciple. Certainly, Holiday was the more precocious of the
two. She began singing in Harlem jazz clubs at age 16 and cut her first
records as an 18-year-old in 1933. By the time she returned to the
studio in 1935, she was a revelation — neither the white balladeers who
dominated the Hit Parade nor the black blues queens from whose ranks she
emerged provided a precedent for her. By traditional measures, she
didn’t have much of an instrument. Her voice was small and slight. She
delivered songs in a midrange drawl that cracked and creaked when she
ventured north and south — a bit shrill in the upper register, a touch
hoarse on the low end. Yet the result was inviting and beguiling. Like a
cool enveloping mist, it was a sound to get lost in."
Her
approach to rhythm was cunning. She meandered around the beat, slyly
elongating and truncating syllables, gliding down for a landing in
surprising places. Sinatra was captivated by the third song she ever
recorded, ‘‘I Wished on the Moon,’’
a stock-standard Tin Pan Alley ballad that Holiday, with deft tugs at
the melody, transforms into something deeper: a celebration of ecstatic
new romance tinged with the melancholy awareness that love fades.
Sinatra signing an autograph for Holiday in the 1940s.
On
that record, as on so many others, you can hear Holiday batting bedroom
eyes. She was a beautiful woman, but it was her husky voice, and the
knowledge of earthly pleasures that it conveyed, that made her a sex
symbol. As for Sinatra, even as a tyro — a babyfaced 25-year-old
fronting Tommy Dorsey’s band in a bow tie too big for his string-bean
frame — the throb in his song was unmistakable. From Holiday, he’d
learned that, ideally, musical seduction was a subtle art. His come-ons
were staked on telling details: minute vocal shading, delicately dabbed
colors, the teasing extra half-beat pause before the headlong plunge
into the chorus. Those notes that Holiday told him to bend — they bent
toward the boudoir.
Of
course, the message of Holiday and Sinatra wasn’t just sex. It was
pain. To put the matter in genre terms: Both Holiday and Sinatra were
torch singers. In Sinatra’s case, this was a novelty. Torch singing had
traditionally been women’s work, but his records made the case that a
bruiser in a fedora could love as hard, could hurt as bad, as any dame.
He proclaimed himself an ‘‘18-karat manic depressive,’’ and you could
hear it even in up-tempo songs like his tumultuous 1956 version of ‘‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’’:
the singer gusting from ecstasy to despair and back again, along the
crests and crashes of Riddle’s orchestrations. His ballads cut even
deeper. On albums like ‘‘In the Wee Small Hours,’’ Sinatra cast himself
as a noir gumshoe, pursuing an insoluble case: ‘‘What is this thing
called love? ... Who can solve its mystery?’’ Holiday played a more
traditional role. In ‘‘My Man,’’ ‘‘Don’t Explain’’
and other torch ballads, she was the bruised diva, doomed to
masochistic love with callous men. But there was more: a spirit of
resiliency and unflappable cool in the face of cruelty you could detect
in all her music, from the most standard pop-jazz genre fare to the
anti-lynching anthem ‘‘Strange Fruit.’’ In Holiday’s hands, a torch song was also a protest song.
The
fates of the two singers can stand as a parable about race in
20th-century America. Holiday was an adored cult artist who never
reached superstardom during her lifetime. When she died, at age 44, she
had 70 cents in her bank account. She spent her last days in Manhattan’s
Metropolitan Hospital under police guard; she’d been placed under
arrest in her hospital bed, on drug possession charges. Sinatra outlived
his hero by 39 years. He released dozens of albums, including a few of
the best ever made, and a handful of duds, too. He was feted by
presidents and died a multimillionaire.
Today,
Holiday and Sinatra are so shrouded in myth it can be hard to see them
clearly. But when you listen to their records, the clouds part.
Frequently, you find them playing against type. Sinatra is often
celebrated as the swaggering Rat-Packer, Holiday as a tragic balladeer.
Yet it’s Holiday’s music that percolates with greater joie de vivre, and
Sinatra’s that scrapes darker depths. One of my favorite parlor games
is to listen to the singers’ versions of the same songs: to hear the hay
that they both made of ‘‘All of Me’’ or ‘‘Day In, Day Out,’’ to observe
their different angles of attack on ‘‘Night and Day’’ — Holiday’s
playful and insouciant, Sinatra’s grand, booming, brooding. Then there
are those moments when the two giants directly address one other.
Sinatra was the acolyte, but the flow of influence reversed on Holiday’s
lavishly orchestrated ‘‘Lady in Satin’’ (1958), an homage to Sinatra’s
Capitol Records concept albums. Holiday made the connection explicit by
opening the LP with a tremulous version of ‘‘I’m a Fool to Want You,’’
Sinatra’s signature torch song, co-written by the man himself. A few
years later, Sinatra answered back on a recording of the standard
‘‘Yesterdays,’’ a Holiday staple. At the 1:11 mark of that song, Sinatra
sings the word ‘‘then,’’ unleashing a dramatically low and rumbling
descending vocal line. Keen-eared listeners picked it up right away:
This was Ol’ Blue Eyes doing his Billie Holiday impression. A century
after their births, Holiday and Sinatra are still talking to each other.
What a privilege it is to listen in.
A version of this article appears in print on October 25, 2015, on page M2132 of T Magazine with the headline: They Did It Their Way
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